


Panama and paradoxes

by PudentillaMcMoany



Series: Political Arrangements [2]
Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 11:48:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6609568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PudentillaMcMoany/pseuds/PudentillaMcMoany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Lascelles is a tax evader and has to hide at Childermass's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Panama and paradoxes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Polly_Chatterly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Chatterly/gifts).



> Full rom-com mode, I am very sorry. Also Lascelles is a Harry in this. JUST BECAUSE.

Childermass is very good at emergencies.

He cannot remember how many of his friends have called him in the middle of the night to ask him for a place to stay, crying on the phone, telling him how their life was _absolutely ruined_ , some of them not even bothering to call, shouting in the interphone at two in the morning. Inevitably, the friends had turned up on his doorstep looking rather like their worst selves; hair matted, greenish skin, some drunk, some barefoot, one, famously, with all her belongings in a Tesco carrier bag.

So it is that when Harry Lascelles calls him, to bark, rather like an order, that the reporters won’t stop calling and that he needs somewhere to spend the night, Childermass pictures him wild-eyed and wild-haired, beard unkempt and badly dressed. He imagines he will be theatrical in his anguish, sobbing, maybe, or even in need of coddling, like a spoiled child. He thinks that he would like to see it, for a change; it is not often that he has the upper hand these days. So he pictures Lascelles in a fit of hysterics, undignified and in need of him, and he is quite taken aback when he opens his door and finds him on his doorstep with sunglasses on his nose and impeccable hair, beard trimmed and a leather bag slung over his shoulder— on his face the usual disdain with the world.

“Your stairway smells like cabbage.”

“Panama, Harry? Seriously?”

“Fuck off.”

Childermass grins, letting him in with a grand gesture of his arm. He makes a big fuss over carrying Lascelles’s bag to his room, even though he is not sure why. It’s not exactly as if Lascelles deserves it, being a tax evader and a terrible guest. Lascelles lets him.

Any other of Childermass’s friends (not that Lascelles is a friend anyway), even the drunkest, would have fussed about it and fought against it and followed him while going on with their crying or screaming or whatever it was that they did, but not Lascelles. Lascelles just stands in the middle of Childermass’s living room (which is also the entrance, and the kitchen), with a look upon his face that is almost, but not quite, of uncertainty.

* * *

 

When Childermass returns, he finds that Lascelles has met Gilbert. He is trying, with very little success, to communicate with him; Gilbert, in turn, eyes him suspiciously from the top of the television.

“Your cat is very ugly."

“Love is blind.”

“Well I am not,” says Lascelles, as if he is personally offended by the existence of his cat (which makes Childermass smile, which is inconvenient and has to be hidden behind a small cough).

“Have a sit. Want something?”

“Fuck me and make me a drink.”

“In this order?”

Lascelles considers it. “Drink first,” he says, while he circumspectly sits on Childermass’s sofa with his small mouth cast downward, muttering something about cat hair on his sweater.

As if he’s heard him, Gilbert jumps on his lap; and Lascelles curses of course, but, like all the guests that Childermass has ever had, lets Gilbert do as he pleases.

“Whiskey?”

“Mmh.”

* * *

 

In the kitchen Childermass sits on the counter. He rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands, bracing himself. He considers for a small while whether he should take the whole bottle to the living room, and then resolves against it. It is probable that with his mood Lascelles would just drink the whole thing; not that Childermass would blame him, in his situation, but he’s determined to keep his whiskey if he can. So he pours two glasses, with ice in Lascelles’s (pah!) and a splash of water in his, and makes his way back. He finds the man gingerly petting Gilbert’s ugly head.

“I can’t believe that you’ve called your cat like your boss.”

“They look alike.”

Lascelles regales him with a noncommittal arching of his eyebrow. Childermass puts the glass in his hand.

“Don’t chug it. Cost me fifty quids.”

“Pathetic,” spits Lascelles, for whom the spending of fifty pounds on booze must be nothing but a bargain.

Childermass is about to lecture him on economic inequality, but thinks better of it. “It’s a Japanese whiskey,” he informs Lascelles instead, and flops on the sofa.

“Mpf!”

“How’s Tomoko?”

“She must be ringing up her lawyers. Said it’s just as well to file the divorce papers now; she already has a lot to explain to her company as it is, what with the scandal and our wedding pictures on the newspapers.”

“Is she involved too?”

“No. No she’s clean. That cunt.”

Childermass huffs, half in amusement, half in reproach. “Can you blame her, really?”

Lascelles doesn’t answer. He scratches at Gilbert’s back, improbably sheepish, and Childermass is treated to the rare view of his misanthropic cat purring in delight. _Would you believe that_.

“And how is Mabel?” He asks, slowly, careful.

“She’s five, John. She doesn’t really have opinions, doesn’t she?”

Childermass thinks that five year olds have a lot of opinions, and that Lascelles must not know his daughter very well if he thinks that. He wonders, for the umpteenth time, what Mabel is like. He wonders how well she copes with having Lascelles for a dad, and then, inevitably, he wonders how he would feel to have a daughter, and reaches the conclusion that he would spoil her rotten, so it is just as well that he and John never went through with the adoption. He sighs.

“You can sleep in my bed. I’ll take the sofa.”

“No guest room?”

“Harry. The house is literally all here. I am lucky that I have a bathtub.”

“How can you live like this.”

Childermass coughs, and mutters: “Housing bill,” which he sinks in a sip of whiskey, rethinking it. This might not be the right moment to fight over politics after all, although a small voice inside his head whispers that once, for him, every moment would have been right to fight over politics. “I am sorry she left you,” he elects to say.

Lascelles grimaces, takes a long (; _shaky_?) breath. Gilbert drools on his jeans.

“Away from me, beast!”

“Don’t manhandle my cat!”

“Then bloody do something!”

Childermass reaches for the cat, sits it on his own lap. Gilbert, seemingly back to his usual self, takes it upon himself to show exactly how unhappy he is with this arrangement, and bites his fingers like the fat bastard that he is. Childermass has to shoo him away from the sofa.

“...It’s alright I guess.”

“Mmh?”

“Tomoko. I mean it’s not as if our relationship wasn’t strained already, after—

“After she found us shagging in her living room?”

“Precisely,” says Lascelles, looking for all intents as if he’s sucking on a particularly  sour lemon. He gulps the last of his whiskey in a nervous sip. The ice hasn’t even melted yet, and clinks pleasantly against the walls of the tumbler.

It’s very weird, thinks Childermass, how we come to associate things together.

Take the ice clinking, for example, which signals that Lascelles has finished his drink, which in turn signals that Lascelles is ready to fuck. Think of the clunk of glass on a wooden table, and of how such a simple thing can send a jolt of excitement through a man’s heart, or in this case, to his prick. It’s that Pavlov thing, must be, and Childermass has never been nothing but responsive, so he sips his last sip and puts his hand on Lascelles’s crotch. No point in beating round the bush anyway, right? But Lascelles does look a little bit flummoxed, which is oddly endearing.

Although flummoxed  may not be the right word. He looks- tired, yes, and a little bit slow, and this in turn makes him look like he’s affected by what Childermass does, which is unusual for someone as unflappable as Lascelles, and even more odd, and even more endearing. He reaches for Childermass’s hand, fingers against cold fingers in a moment that is almost dazzlingly erotic; he takes his glass and puts it on the table, and then he just looks at Childermass with his head slightly tilted and his eyelids heavy, as if he’s studying him.

Childermass looks into Lascelles’s eyes; in fact, he finds it very hard to look anywhere else, so that he is still looking at Lascelles as he falls on his knees in front of him, and he is still looking as he brushes his palms flat against Lasccelles’s knees, and from there on his tights, and then _under_ his tights, and then under his arse, to grip at it very firmly; or as he pulls Lascelles flush against him, except then he must break eye contact, because Lascelles’s prick ends up level with his face. He nuzzles his jeans, breathes in a way that he hopes is suggestive.

Lascelles’s clothes smell like fresh laundry. They always do, which is one of the few things that Childermass unabashedly likes about the man (the list of things he is ashamed of liking about him being long and ever-growing). He supposes that it’s easy to smell of fresh laundry when you have someone to do your laundry, but be as it may he has come to associate this precise smell with Lascelles, with results that have often been awkward. It’s very inconvenient to be aroused while you walk in front of a dry cleaner.

Anyway, he pulls Lascelles into him, and he nuzzles his jeans, and he manages not to be sidetracked by the smell of fresh laundry and he lifts Lascelles’s sweater with his teeth, just a little, so that he can lick at the skin of his side. Of course, as it happens, he finds himself distracted again, this time by the consistency of Lascelles’s sweater, which is dark blue, and very expensive, and very soft. He tugs at its hem to get it out of the way, and when Lascelles, now in his (light grey) shirtsleeves, makes a small moan, he realises, a breath too late, that it’s not just the sweater. There is a softness to Lascelles, to the whole of Lascelles, that is very unusual; and that is hardly ever there, or better: there is- there has always been something, but it’s always been lurking, almost menacing, behind a strong façade of patrician ennui, and Childermass has never wanted to enquire. Today, though-

“Are you tired?”

“What?”

Childermass takes off Lascelles’s shoes, and then his socks, and opens the front of his trousers.

“Tired,” he repeats. “You look-” _Soft._ “Tired.”

“Haven’t slept in three days.”

And there’s that, and a small faint humourless laugh, and Lascelles’s eyes looking on his side a shade too long.

Were Lascelles another person, Childermass would do something. He would, for example, envelop him in his arms; kiss the top of his head, say, _hey, it’s late now anyway_ , and carry him to bed, proceeding to rip the rest of his clothes off and hold him, naked against him, until he falls asleep.

He has done it. He’s good at emergencies, and at comforting tired, scared people.

But Lascelles is Lascelles, he supposes, and so he takes his shirt off and he takes his pristine white briefs off, and he circles his tongue around the rim of his half-soft cock until it’s not half-soft anymore, and then he takes it in his mouth so deep that he can feel his throat tightening, the beginning of an instinctive gag. He looks at Lascelles while Lascelles’s eyes roll back into his head, his mouth slackened, a hand on his chest, graceful, so graceful, and Childermass still looks at him while he licks at the length of his prick, and then, again, takes Lascelles deep into his mouth, bobs his head slowly and deeply until Lascelles’s (beautiful, patrician-white) prick is slick with spit, red and flush against Childermass’s cheek as he takes Lascelles’s balls between his lips, gently. He feels Lascelles’s hand on his head, in his hair, grabbing him in place where he belongs, that is: with his mouth full of Lascelles’s cock (and he _does_ feel, strangely, that he belongs), and Lascelles holds him there as he jerks his hips faster, almost haphazardly (he’s never really haphazard, but he’s always brutal, which sometimes feels the same), and he fills his mouth and his throat of his prick, and Childermass has not even touched himself, is not even out of his clothes yet but he feels, dangerously, close to the brink, rutting as he is against Lascelles’s leg, and he moans against Lascelles, which makes for more spit, which makes for a filthy lapping sound each time Lascelles’s prick comes out of his mouth, and then again in, impossibly deep, making his throat tighten and his eyes water, and then Lascelles is holding his head still, fingers so tight around the nape of his neck that Childermass is sure he will find red marks on it in the morning (which he always likes for some strange, impossible reason), and he is coming, in desperate bucks of his hips, with a desperate moan that sounds, a small bit, like he’s breaking.

Mouth damp with spit and come, Childermass pulls Lascelles down to him, kisses his mouth. He knows that Lascelles will let him, now. He feels the man slacken against him, tongue lapping languid at the outline of his lips, of his teeth; careless, and ungraceful, and sleepy. It should not- it is not right, but he’s almost moved by it, by this trust he has earned. Things are like this now, in his life, he supposes: he hates it when he forgets that Harry Lascelles is an utter piece of shit, but he also loves it a great deal.

* * *

 

Lascelles dozes on the sofa immediately afterwards, naked, very white except for the red spots on his chest and on his prick, leaving a trail of come on his tight where it has gone slack. Childermass slowly follows the dampness with his tongue, still sitting on the floor, his cheek on Lascelles’s leg.

“You’re scratching me.”

He bites the inside of Lascelles’s tight in retaliation, which makes him yelp, and swat his head with the back of a long hand, which makes Childermass hold Lascelles’s wrist and pin it against the sofa, and then lazily get up, and take Lascelles’s other wrist.

“Let’s take you to bed.”

“I thought you were leaving it to me.”

“I thought you wanted to be shagged.”

Lascelles is so sleepy that Childermass almost has to carry him to his room, naked and frail, although Lascelles would hate to admit it. Were he another- were the both of them other people, Childermass would let him sleep, or at least ask him, if he’s too tired. Does he need to sleep. Does he want to sleep together, holding tight. But Lascelles is sleepy and he is stubborn, so Childermass half drags him to bed and makes him sit there, and Lascelles reclines, right arm arched above his head, left arm draped over his stomach, the waning sun etching lines on his skin through the slits in the window, and Childermass does not want to ask him if he wants to sleep, alone or together; want he wants is to crawl over him and to kiss him (his mouth or his neck or his chest; or just mouth at his clavicle, he is undecided, but no further down than that, because he will need to fuck him, too, and it would make the logistics difficult). So he takes off his shoes, his pants, his shirt, his socks, his briefs, while Lascelles half looks at him and half dozes off, with lids heavy and mouth half open.

“You asleep?” Asks Childermass as he drapes himself over him, hands splayed on the small of Lascelles’s back so he can lift his hips, trail his tongue over Lascelles’s stomach, and then, following the raised line of his sternum, his jugular, at which he bites softly, feeling the gentle creak of sinews under his teeth, and Lascelles hisses, and licks at his lobe, and at the rim of his ear.

Childermass rolls him on his stomach; it’s easy when Lascelles is so tired, and so malleable, arms flailing a little bit on his sides in a way that is almost sweet. He spreads his legs wide apart, bites, less gentle than before, at the round curve of his arse. Lascelles curses, moves, jittery, under Childermass’s hands, but Childermass holds him with fingers digging deep into his sides.

When he is sure that Lascelles is sufficiently still he leaves him, reaches to the bedside table, coats his fingers in lubricant (it smells tangy, and a bit artificial; he has come to associate the smell with sex- with Lascelles and Lascelles alone). He pushes one finger inside him, and Lascelles makes a sound half like a gasp and half like a moan, and he reaches for Childermass’s pillow, hugging it under his head. Childermass slips a second finger in, and feels the tension giving, Lascelles’s body slacken to make way for him, filthy and languid, which hits him with a heady wave of want. He thinks, as he pushes a third finger inside Lascelles (makes his movements less refined, more jittery, Lascelles’s moans more peremptory, his hips buck demanding); he thinks, while he mouths at the dip at the small of his back, and Lascelles moans once more, that there are a lot of contradictions in his life. How ashamed he is for liking Lascelles, and how unashamedly they fuck. How much he likes and yet not likes the man now writhing under him close-eyed and half asleep, like the most debauched tart that ever was.

Lascelles himself is a strange sort of paradox, Childermass concludes, stroking himself very slowly, coating his prick with lubricant. But how he likes the man, for all that he’s impossible. Childermass likes his dark eyes and his white skin; his long limbs and his short temper, and his foul mouth and his clean arsehole, in which he sinks his prick, slowly and maddeningly, with a wet sucking sound that is disgusting and beautiful. When he is buried in Lascelles, hipbones against the curve of his arse, he bites at the nape of his neck, sucks it long enough and hard enough to bruise; it’s not as if Lascelles has to work tomorrow anyway- not that he has ever really cared. Lascelles gasps loudly and hisses a curse, which comes out all garbled. He buries his head in the pillow, ruts against the mattress in imperceptible movements that Childermass notices, and registers, and echoes- except of course that the movements don’t stay imperceptible, and before long he has to crane his neck and watch his prick come out of Lascelles’s arse and then back in again, and it’s good, delirious in fact, makes him feel an ownership over the man that he can’t really claim, and so he moves a little bit faster, penetrates Lascelles shallowly, an excruciating fast giving him the tip of his prick, and Lascelles says something, muffled by the pillows, and Childermass pulls out his hair on the crown of his head, jerks him away from the pillow, to talk in his ear, clumsy, uncoordinated, gasping.

“Can scream, y’know?”

“Bet the walls are thin.”

“What then.”

“Neighbours.”

“They— starts out Childermass, but he has to stop; to cant Lascelles’s hips upwards, so that he’s taking all of his prick, which he buries in him with an obscene delightful slapping sound of skin on skin. He moans against Lascelles’s shoulderblade, jutting and delightfully salty under his tongue.

“They can’t hear, Harry, you just scream for me you difficult _fuck_ ,” he hisses, after a particularly deep thrust, and Lascelles curses in turn, hoarse and wanting, and Childermass, fingers still in Lascelles’s hair, tilts his head backwards, slips his tongue into his open panting mouth (and then he thrusts too hard, and he loses control over the kiss, licks at the angle when upper and lower lip meet, which should not be particularly sexy, but sends him into pushing frantically into Lascelles for a while, muttering curses and endearments).

Lascelles starts to rut against the mattress then, untouched by Childermass, and Childermass takes his prick out of him with a wet sound, turns him around on his back. The face Lascelles makes is almost lost, almost innocent, and he is on the verge of telling him- how beautiful, how maddening, just how much he likes and not likes him- or not that, another thing, maybe; and then he takes Lascelles’s wrist, and guides his arms above his head, so that Lascelles can take hold of the headboard, and then he buries himself into him again (open and slick and so warm), but this time he can look into his eyes, and he can take hold of his prick, and strike him immediately fast, in time with his thrusts, and each thrust makes Lascelles’s head knock on the headboard, Childermass’s bed clunk suspiciously, comically, against the wall, but Childermass does not really think of the neighbours as he cranes his head very close to Lascelles’s and lets a thread of spit fall from his mouth to his, sees it pooling in the crease between Lascelles’s lips, trickle down his chin, and Lascelles, hands still holding the headboard, tilts his face and his hips and he kisses Childermass’s open mouth with his open mouth, and just like that Childermass is coming, spilling himself into Lascelles, and he’s crying a sharp cry, and he’s almost, again, to the point of saying it, how much he likes and dislikes him, but fortunately Lascelles precedes him, and “Don’t you _dare_ ,” he says, and Childermass has to keep stroking him, now being the one who is half asleep, which requires all of his concentration. Lascelles, now entirely awake, can’t put up with it, has never tolerated slowness, so he takes the matter in his own hands, and straddles Childermass, knees to the sides of his chest, blocking his arms effectively (so efficient, he’s always efficient, even in this), and he strokes himself efficiently, and quickly, and he comes, hot and tangy, on Childermass’s face, and on his pillow, and in his hair.

* * *

 

Lascelles licks at his lips through the come, and Childermass has to keep him still already, palms pressed to the sides of his face, to kiss him- it will be impossible afterwards, Lascelles never lets himself be kissed if not during sex.

“You’re getting all sticky.”

“I noticed.”

“Go wash yourself, you’re disgusting.”

Childermass sits up. He does not want to do as Lascelles tells him, but as usual this proves very hard. He is growing very sticky, too, so there’s that.

He tries, however, albeit tentatively, to kiss Lascelles’s neck. As a sort of test.

“Getting me all dirty. Go I say.”

Childermass goes. He gets up from the bed and goes to the bathroom, and he takes a shower too, for good measure. When he goes back to his room to wear some clothes, he finds Lascelles already sleeping, hair mussed already, on his stained pillows.

In the kitchen, he turns an omelet and watches the sun setting, the red rooftops turning golden. He feels the breeze of the Spring evening on his skin, which makes his skin prickle pleasantly, and hears the birds chirping.

He thinks of how Lascelles had not slept in three days, and of how he’s asleep, now, in his bed, and of how innocent he looked when he covered him with his quilt. Which is another contradiction, considering how he is a _bloody thief._


End file.
